Dust storm on Texel

The extreme weather conditions (prolonged lack of rain and continuous gale-force winds) cause the top soils of pastures to be blown off. Even on Texel we have dust storms!

Dust storms or outbreaks are typical features of desert areas and only rarely occur in the temperate regions of our planet.

With the lack of rain over the past few weeks, the low temperatures and the lack of crop protecting the top soils, but especially the strong winds, conditions are optimal for dust outbreaks to occur.

Below you can see the meteorological conditions this morning shortly before 8 o' clock when the photo was taken: strong winds (8 Bft., >17m/s) straight from the East, a typical winter synoptic situation. The threshold wind velocity for dust emission from soils is 10 m/s and if all other conditions (particularly: bare soils) are met as well, there is nothing to stop a dust event from happening!

In the case of large agricultural land areas, such as exist in northern Germany, these dust outbreaks can lead to serious problems; in April 2011 a huge traffic accident, involving more than 40 cars, was caused by a severe reduction in visibility thanks to a dust outbreak.

Why are we so interested in dust?

It turns out that there are many direct and indirect links between dust and climate. The most straightforward one is fine-grained dust in the upper atmosphere blocking incoming sunlight, causing a net cooling effect. But there are warming effects too; in the lower atmosphere, coarser-grained dust particles absorb energy that was refelected at the earth's surface and this way, dust acts as a greenhouse gas.

There are many more negative and positive climate-related effects but the main link to the ocean is the fact that marine life may profit from nutrients in dust. When plankton reproduces, it takes up CO2 from the atmosphere. Thus, dust could potentially act as an ocean fertilizer, sequestering a greenhouse gas!